Lenten remembrance, during the 40 days of time preceding Easter, is not an area that I feel qualified to write about in any way. But I would like to suggest this March 24, 2012 article by World Magazine’s Mindy Belz as a good beginning point. The summary of the article: “A Lenten season of self-sacrifice should lead us not away (from) but into the midst of men” (taken from B.B. Warfield) resonates with me because I have, for most of my Christian life, been guilty of the former. Lk. 9:23 came to mind tonight: “If any one would come after Me, he must deny Himself, take up His cross, and follow Me.” This is what I want to do, more so in ways that lead me into “the midst of men,” without sacrificing or being ashamed of the truth that is in Jesus.

Do you agree with the final paragraph in her article? (“The mistake we make is seeing our sacrificial choices in ascetic terms rather than exuberant ones. In Christ we live in the excess of life and joy, not the absence of them. The self-sacrifice Christ calls for, said Warfield, means… absorption in… our times and our fellows.”)

I think a contemporary figure who has practiced this “absorption in our times and fellows” is 80 year old Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship and Colson Center for Christian Worldview. May God continue to bless his ministry and supply his every need.